Eric M Russell (5/10/2011)I'm not sure how many users monitor their guest book or blog posts close enough on a daily basis to notice if one (out of a couple hundred) entries from months back suddenly disappeared. I'm sure somebody eventually would, and they'd be really verklempt about it.

If it was an old one then chances are very slim that anyone would notice. I was coming from the perspective that it was the write failing meaning it is a new post instead of an old one. If it's a read that fails and it shows up after a refresh no one is going to care if it's Facebook or a blog. Well, no one should care. If it were a medical record, one bad read can have very, very bad consequences even if the data shows up on a refresh.

The issue is with some systems (not saying Facebook is one), that you might write an update on Node 1, and you see the update. However Node 1 is buried, and before it can update node 2 and node 3, it fails. when it's rebuilt/recovered. your update is gone. You might not notice, or if you do, do you stop using the service? You might, but depending on your investment in the service, you might not. You might be more careful, or chalk it up to a random glitch in the matrix.

However if one of my deposits failed at an ATM because it wasn't fully hardened in the entire system, that's bad.

Customers don't want to ever lose their data, but it happens and we accept some minor glitches.

My takeaway from that talk was not that it was a failure of algorithmic learning but rather it is an algorithm designed to predict my interests or point of view; the problem being that I will no longer see points of view not aligned with my own, thereby creating a "mind-narrowing" experience.

Eric M Russell (5/10/2011)I'm not sure how many users monitor their guest book or blog posts close enough on a daily basis to notice if one (out of a couple hundred) entries from months back suddenly disappeared. I'm sure somebody eventually would, and they'd be really verklempt about it.

If it was an old one then chances are very slim that anyone would notice. I was coming from the perspective that it was the write failing meaning it is a new post instead of an old one. If it's a read that fails and it shows up after a refresh no one is going to care if it's Facebook or a blog. Well, no one should care. If it were a medical record, one bad read can have very, very bad consequences even if the data shows up on a refresh.

It would depend on the data that was lost.

If we're talking blogs, for example, there are entries on some that I reference pretty regularly, even though they are far from recent. For example, just yesterday, I had four devs read an older article on Gail Shaw's blog. If that entry disappeared, it would be noticed, and it would matter.

How about if older movies started disappearing from IMDB?

So, it depends on the data. I guess the point is, if your social site of choice is using a non-ACID data repository, don't put any data into it that would matter if it suddenly goes away. "Matter" is always subjective, so pick your fights on that one.